OptimizePress is a very popular WordPress theme that allows creating professional sales pages and landing pages (and not only…) very quickly and easily.

After working with OP for the last couple of years (with both OP 1.0 and OP 2.0), we can definitely say that this is one of our favorite themes.

In this post we summarize the pros and cons of using OptimizePress 2.0 which is the new improved theme and why we believe it’s a must-have theme for every website owner.

Without further ado… Here are the top 10 reasons why we love OptimizePress and why you should use it:

1. Create professional looking websites using OptimizePress

It allows you to create highly stylized and professional sales and landing pages very easily using OptimizePress ready-made templates and elements.

Create professional looking websites

2. OptimizePress saves a decent amount of time and money

OptimizePress allows you to design your website on your own, no need to hire a designer to do the job for you. All you need to do is choose the elements you want to use from the respectful amount of elements available and add your content. Some of the elements available are: arrows, text blocks, buttons, dividers, headlines, feature blocks, FAQs, audio player etc.

Save a decent amount of time and money

3. OptimizePress allows the use Ready-Made templates for different purposes

You get templates for all the popular types of pages you may need, including: Sales pages, blog pages, landing pages, membership pages, opt-in pages and even webinar / FAQs and product download pages.

Use Ready-Made templates for different purposes

4. OptimizePress can be combined with another theme

You can choose to use OptimizePress only on certain pages of your website and use a different theme for all your other pages. When you purchase OptimizePress you get it in 2 versions: theme and plugin. If you are already using a different theme, all you need to do is simply install the plugin version and not the theme version, and use the Page Builder feature to create specific pages within your website.

Combine OptimizePress with another theme

5. No need to install any complementary plugins for better design

OptimizePress includes many built-in features so you won’t need to search for any other plugins, free or paid, for example: Countdowns, pricing tables, social sharing buttons, Facebook comments etc.

No need to install any complementary plugins for better design

6. OptimizePress allows creating a closed membership site

OptimizePress also includes a membership plugin (OptimizeMember) you can use to create a secured members area. A disclaimer about this features: we haven’t really tried this feature yet, so we cannot share any inputs about it, but you should know that this feature exists.

7. OptimizePress is responsive

A responsive theme has a very big advantage over a non-responsive theme, and though many of the themes today are responsive, and this probably won’t be the only reason why you will choose OptimizePress over other themes, we thought it is important to mention this feature. Here is an example from one of our websites:

OptimizePress is responsive

8. OptimizePress provides other important settings

From within the OptimizePress dashboard you can determine different settings, including: adding analytics and tracking codes, defining your SEO settings, uploading a Favicon, adding a site footer etc. All these settings can be easily done through OP’s Dashboard tab, no need to code anything.

Optimizepress Provides other important settings

9. OptimizePress allows integrations with popular services

OptimizePress allows you to easily integrate with some of the most popular services through their API, including: AWeber, iContact, MailChimp, Emma, InfosionSoft, GetResponse, 1ShoppingCart, OfficeAutoPilot, OntraPort, GoToWebinar and CampaignMonitor. It allso allows integration with Facebook API.

Optimizepress allows integrations with popular services

10. No need to be a technical person to use OptimizePress

Combining all the advantages above, anyone can use OP and with no need to do any coding at all, so if you are not a programmer or a very technical person, you don’t need to worry about it.

What You Should Know before Using OP

Thought we think there are way more advantages than disadvantages to using OptimizePress, there are 2 important things you should know about it before you start using it:

1. Can slow down your website

Since OptimizePress contains many elements and templates, the file size is very heavy. This can cause your website to slow down, however, if you optimize your website for better performance (we will write about it in a different post), you don’t need to worry about this so much. We are using OP on many of our websites, and we live with it just fine.

2. Does not have an option to copy the design to existing pages

If your website already contains pages with content, you cannot copy the design you want to these pages, but you need to create new pages with a different permalink, for example: “http://yourdomain.com/about-1“, design the new page, delete your previous page and then change the permalink. Highly frustrating process, no doubt about it.

Since we’ve had to deal with this more than once, we found a simple way to do that:

We created only one page and designed it using OptimizePress, then we installed a free plugin called Duplicate Post and cloned the new page so it created as many copies of the post with the new design as we needed, then we edited only the titles and content, so the design remained the same in all posts / pages.

After working with OP 2.0 from the beginning, this is really the best way we found so far to overcome this disadvantage. If you have a faster way to do so, we would appreciate it if you share it with us and with our other readers!

Another option, instead of the one we suggested above, is to add the elements you want to an existing page or post by editing it. You simply choose the elements from the “Add Element” button and the element will be added as a shortcode to the page. If you need to add only few elements then it can work, but if you really need to redesign the page, we don’t really recommend it as it will make the page look very messy with too many shortcodes in it.

In Conclusion…

When taking into consideration the minor disadvantages OptimizePress has in comparison to the advantages and value it offers, it’s really a no brainer. It will save you time and money (if you were planning on outsourcing the design stuff) and it will make your website look very professional.

Using a theme that has built-in shortcodes, for example: Headlines, Avada, OptimizePress 1.0 etc.

Installing a stand-alone plugin such as: Shortcodes Ultimate

We personally have a “love-hate relationship” with shortcodes:

We love shortcodes because because they can really help improve users experience, the website’s look and feel and organize the content better.

We “hate” shortcodes because they can make the posts look messy if you use too many shortcodes in one post / page.

Using a Theme’s Shortcodes

The main downside of using a theme’s shortcodes is that it makes it more complicated to shift to a new theme if your content is wrapped with a lot of shortcodes, unless you are using a theme from the same company that supports the same shortcodes.

Just think about going over all the posts and pages of your website and changing their design and structure all over again…

Using a Stand-Alone Shortcodes Plugin

For the exact reason above we chose to work with a stand-alone plugin instead of relying on the theme’s built-in shortcodes.

We haven’t found any major downsides to using a stand-alone plugin, but there are two you might consider:

If you don’t want to have too many plugins installed (though one more plugin won’t really make such a difference…)

You are using a plugin that does not update on a regular and frequent basis. The WordPress platform releases frequent updates, so make sure you choose a popular plugin that has frequent updates, we recommend using Shortcodes Ultimate.

Here is a screenshot of Shortcodes Ultimate available shortcodes (enter a post and click on the “Insert Shortcode” button above the toolbar):

Shortcodes Ultimate available shortcodes

Got any insights regarding how to use shortcodes? You are more than welcome to share them with us in the comment section below.

If you have build several WordPress websites by now then you probably noticed that you have built yourself a list of “must-have” plugins you install on every WordPress website you build.

We also have a list of our own, the list includes dozens of both free and paid plugins we are using on a regular basis.

In this list we decided to focus on the really must-have free plugins and we have included only plugins that we believe are the core plugins that every website owner should have installed on his website, from beginner to advanced.

There are the Top 6 Plugins We Chose for the List:

Spam comments are very annoying, they make it difficult for you to notice real comments between all spam ones, they get your emails box flooded with notifications about new comments waiting and they can even make your website’s slower if too many spam piles up.

Akismet is easy and simple to use, all you need to do is open an through WordPress.com (if you don’t already have one) and choose the free plan (assuming you are installing the plugin on a personal website).

Broken Link Checker helps you detect any broken links your website might contain. The plugin notifies you by mail whenever a broken link is detected. This plugin will be more and more valuable as your website grows.

This plugin will also help you monetize your website for SEO, as broken links can lower your rankings in the search results.

Inside the plugin’s settings you can define general settings (as seen in the screenshot below) and choose where to look for links: posts, pages, comments, the blogroll and custom fields.

Limit Login Attempts is a highly important security plugin that will help prevent hackers from hacking your website.

When installing a new WordPress website, you have the option to choose to automatically add Limit Login Attempts plugin to the installation process, or you can download it from the WordPress repository and upload it to the site.

Note that the plugin hasn’t been updates for over 2 years, but we are still using it on our websites and we haven’t encountered any problems with it so far.

In the plugins settings you will also get a list of all the attempts made to hack your website, the list includes the IP address and the user name they tried to access with (“admin” is probably the most popular one so don’t use it as a username ever).

WordPress SEO by Yoast is another great plugin that can help you improve your website’s ranking in the search engines.

Again, there are many popular plugins for SEO (such as: Ultimate SEO and All In One SEO Pack), but after using all three of them, Yoast’s plugin is our favorite. We will write a complete comparison between all three in a future post).

The plugin can help you write SEO oriented posts, provide you with suggestions on how to improve your SEO rankings, allows you to add meta descriptions and titles and more.

In conclusion, WordPress SEO by Yoast gives you real SEO guidance from an expert.

We haven’t included a screenshot as the plugin has several settings screens, you can check them out in WordPress repository using the above link.

– – –

As written in the beginning, this post sums up only the core must-have plugins we recommend every website to include.

We originally stated this post with 12 plugins, but we narrowed down the list to only 6 because we wanted to really make it a list of the really MUST HAVE plugins.

There are many ways to styling images boarders in a WordPress website:

1. You can add a custom CSS code which can be easily done using My Custom CSS plugin or through your website’s theme, if your theme includes an option to add custom CSS. The main downside when using this way is that you need to have basic CSS understanding.

2. You can download a plugin called Advanced Image Styles from the WordPress repository, but then you will need to adjust each image separately (very time-consuming), as seen in the screenshot below:

Advanced Image Styles – WordPress Plugin

Adding Stylized Borders to All Your Images Easily

We came across a very simple yet helpful plugin called “WP Image Borders” that allows you to add stylized boarders to all of your website’s images from one settings screen.

The Settings screen is divided to 3 main styling types of settings:

1. Image target – you can add borders to all images by checking the box (as seen in the screenshot below) or by adding specific CSS classes:

One very useful extension is “Conditional Logic” that allows you to create “smart” forms that will display or hide certain form fields according to conditions you add to specific fields.

You can basically create interactive forms that “react” to the user and change the options according to the fields a user chooses.

This plugin is very useful and effective, and it is also very easy to configure.

Example Form

Here is a simple form with conditional fields we have created you can experiment with.

You can see how the events in the second field change according to the option you choose in the “Country” field:

[ ninja_forms_display_form id=2 ]

Adding a Conditional Statement:

You can easily add conditional statements to practically any field you want, so the possibilities are endless.

Add the relevant field to the form and you will see the conditional statement feature in the editing option:

Adding a Conditional Statement – NinjaForms Conditional Logic

Now choose the relevant option from the drop-down:

Adding a Conditional Statement – NinjaForms Conditional Logic

And fill-in all other options according to the option you chose:

Adding a Conditional Statement – NinjaForms Conditional Logic

That’s it!

Conditional Login Extension Usages:

There are really unlimited purposes for this extension, here are some of them we are using for our own websites:

Creating registration forms for special events that occur in different places and dates. When a user chooses a city, a drop-down list with the relevant dates in that specific city is displayed that the user can choose from.

Creating different wizards with questions and answers that are displayed according to the options users choose. The sky is really the limit regarding the types of wizards you can create and can change according to your niche.

Creating surveys in different topics in order to improve our clients’ experience and our overall service.

Are you using the Conditional Logic extension for other purposes? You are welcome to share them in the comment section below.

Switching between users can be very effective and allows you to get a clearer understanding of what different users experience when browsing through your website, plus, it can help you improve your users experience and your website in general.

However, switching between users the WordPress old fashion way can be very time-consuming.

You have probably seen it before, you install a theme or plugin and a message displayed if you want to activate some related plugins as well.

In many cases, this could be a plugin that is necessary for the theme / plugin process or, in other cases, you just want to market another plugin that you developed or that you have a joint venture agreement with.

This simple tutorial will guide you on how to activate a plugin that is already installed, it will not show you how to install a plugin that is not already installed (we will cover it in a future tutorial).

The idea behind this process is simple, WordPress stores all the active plugins’ list in the options table.

A special field is assigned to that list under the name activate_plugins .

So in order to activate any plugin that is already installed we just need to change this field value.

Before we start writing the simple code, we need to find the plugin file name as we are going to use the activation process.

A simple way to find the plugin’s file name is by using the code below. These few lines will add the plugin’s file name into the plugins page list, so you can use the activation code later (a plugin version of this code is attached to this tutorial, you can download it and activate it on your website):

As you can see in the above code, you can activate more than one plugin at once just by filling-in the right information inside the $plugin_to_activates array.

Important Notice:

Important aspect that you should know about this process is: When WordPress activates a plugin on the back-end using the activate command in the plugins’ page, it is activating it inside a “sandbox”. If the plugin is broken, your website will not be broken and you will get a message regarding the plugin’s error on WordPress admin back-end. However, when activating a plugin using a code, no sandbox is created and the plugin is activated in the live environment, so if the plugin that is activated has an error, it will break the website as well.

Examples for usage:

The plugin needs some other plugins activated in order to work properly.

You are creating a testing environment and you need to activate / deactivate several plugins at one.

You want to make sure a plugin is active (for any reason that you can think of).

If you like this tutorial share using the social sharing buttons, if you want to add new information feel free to write in the comments section below.

What Our Customers Say

“Just wanted to let you know that the plugin is working great and incomplete registrations have gone to zero! I’m definitely going to do a review of the plugin and get it for my own site.” MaAnna Stephenson BlogAid.net

“Bob Tolbert’s Wish List Member plugins have made life easier on us by automating processes that would normally eat up a ton of admin time. I especially appreciate Bob’s quick response time and customer service. Fact is, our membership website would not function without these plug ins.” Michael Burwell TheHangoutHelper.com

“This plugin is the best way to supercharge your membership signups. I was especially impressed by the developers prompt customer service!” Stan Smith PushingSocial.com

“The Wishlist Auto Registration plugin is really great, I love it! And the support you guy’s deliver are really outstanding! Thank you so much!” Johan Skalberg kalisikaran.info